????本周，聽聞EMC和戴爾這兩大巨頭正在協商進行科技界史上最大的一次合并，業內人士均興奮不已。

????總部位于馬薩諸塞州霍普金頓的EMC是一家擁有36年歷史的商用數據存儲產品公司，市值約為500億美元。而總部位于德克薩斯州朗德羅克的戴爾在20世紀90年代憑借廉價、可定制的筆記本電腦聲名鵲起，公司于2013年以244億美元的價格完成了私有化。

????自從周三晚上二者合并的消息傳來，許多人對這起交易傳聞的財務細節產生了疑問——首先就是這筆交易如何達成？（戴爾現在身負約120億美元的債務。）另一個問題是，為何兩家老邁的科技公司會想捆綁到一起來應對科技業的變革。（換句話說：如果你把兩塊磚頭一起扔進水里，它們會浮起來嗎？）

????兩家公司都是20世紀90年代第一次科技熱潮的受益者：戴爾出售個人電腦，EMC出售公司存儲系統。隨著計算市場的重心轉移，兩家公司都開始拓展新業務。盡管戴爾仍然出售筆記本電腦、顯示器和服務器，但他們也開始出售安全服務、云管理軟件和業務集成服務。自2010年戴爾收購云服務管理公司Boomi起，就開始加大對這些領域的投資。2013年戴爾私有化之后，又與許多云服務供應商合作，討論所謂的聚合架構，為自己的客戶提供私人云服務。

????與此同時，EMC專注于不太受云計算革命影響的高端企業存儲設備。公司也大力投資了新業務，如2004年收購虛擬化軟件公司VMware（正是這類軟件在21世紀最初十年的中期推動了云計算的發展）。公司還在2010年收購了數據倉儲軟件公司Greenplum，在2013年收購了數據分析軟件公司Pivotal。EMC的聯盟制商業模式——以傳統的EMC業務為核心，VMware（于2007年上市，如今市值已達約340億美元）、RSA和Pivotal圍繞它開展——可以讓母公司在獲取新公司利益的同時不妨礙新公司的創新，這種模式一直飽守贊譽。而近年來，Elliot Management等投資公司又試圖把它們拆分，以獲取更大價值。

????那為什么戴爾和EMC要合并？

????從EMC的角度來看，戴爾只是一個具有吸引力的買家——尤其是考慮到惠普不愿收購他們，而思科也不太可能收購他們。在大型IT設備供應商中，戴爾是唯一有可能的對象，這就是該公司可能吸引EMC及其銀行家的唯一理由。

????從戴爾的角度看，拜Pivotal所賜，EMC在存儲、安全和數據分析上擁有額外價值。戴爾沒有EMC在企業存儲業務上的影響力，這要歸功于EMC的VNX企業存儲磁盤陣列，對戴爾來說，這一點十分誘人。如果戴爾決定成為業內人士所謂的“聚合基礎設施供應商”——換句話說，也就是網絡、存儲和計算一條龍服務供應商，EMC的存儲產品對戴爾的戰略而言也會是一項利好。在統一計算系統服務器上，思科走在了前頭，惠普緊隨其后。在這一方面，戴爾去年與Nutanix展開合作，已經進行了嘗試，不過他們仍未取得多大進步。

????然而，有一點對戴爾來說是個問題：VMware。隨著消費者越來越多地選擇更便宜、更全能的“開源”產品而不是專有產品，VMware的發展已經開始減慢。而戴爾就是力推開放式網絡的公司之一，因此合并VMware之舉有悖這家德克薩斯州公司的精神文化。

????所以，如果你是戴爾，正在考慮收購EMC，那么這家公司的產品的確有很多值得你喜歡。（我們甚至還沒有提到計算機安全公司RSA。）不過把這些業務全部打包買下來需要幾百億美元，這值得嗎？恐怕不值。而且這場交易絲毫沒有緩解兩家公司存在的困境：在未來，他們的核心業務（和利潤中心）將會遭遇競爭，面臨衰退幾乎是不可避免的。

????這就是目前科技圈對這次合并百思不得其解的原因。（財富中文網）

????譯者：嚴匡正

????The technology industry is atwitter this week over news that EMC and Dell, two landmark technology companies, are reportedly in talks to consummate what could be one of the largest tech mergers of all time.

????Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC, a 36-year-old industry fixture that makes data, and storage products for businesses, has a market value of about $50 billion. Round Rock, Texas-based Dell, which rose to prominence in the 1990s thanks to its cheap, customizable laptops, went private in 2013 for $24.4 billion.

????Since the news emerged late on Wednesday, there have been many questions about the financial details of the reported deal—how, for instance, it could happen in the first place. (Dell has about $12 billion in debt.) Another question? Why two aging technology companies would seek to bind themselves together to endure the winds of technological change. (Put another way: If you throw two bricks together, will they float?)

????Both companies were darlings of the first big technology boom in the 1990s: Dell sold PCs; EMC sold corporate storage systems. As the computing market shifted, both companies expanded into new areas. While Dell still sells laptops, displays, and servers, it also sells security services, cloud management software, and business integration services. Investment in those areas has accelerated since 2010, the year Dell bought Boomi, a company that manages services between clouds. Since taking the company private in 2013, Dell has struck partnerships with a host of cloud providers, talked up so-called converged architectures, and created private clouds for its own customers.

????EMC meanwhile has focused on high-end enterprise storage equipment that’s less threatened by the cloud computing revolution. It has also made key investments in new business areas, such as its 2004 acquisition of VMware VMW -5.84% , which makes the virtualization software that gave rise to cloud computing in the mid-2000s, its 2010 acquisition of Greenplum, which made data warehouse software, and the 2013 launch of Pivotal, which makes data analytics software. EMC’s “federation” business model—traditional EMC at its center; VMware (which went public in 2007 and now has a market cap of about $34 billion), RSA and Pivotal orbiting it—has been applauded for allowing the parent company to reap the benefits of the newer companies’ success without impeding their innovation. In more recent years investors such as Elliot Management have looked to break it up in the interest of extracting more value.

????So why pair Dell and EMC?

????For EMC’s part, Dell is simply an attractive buyer—especially if Hewlett-Packard HPQ 4.18% didn’t bite and Cisco CSCO 1.34% is unlikely to. In the world of big IT equipment providers, Dell is the last man standing, one reason that the company may appeal to EMC and its bankers.

????For Dell’s part, EMC offers additional assets in storage, security, and data analytics, thanks to Pivotal. Dell lacks EMC’s clout in the enterprise storage business, a credit to EMC’s VNX enterprise storage arrays, and that is desirous to the folks in Round Rock. EMC’s storage products are an additional boon to Dell’s strategy if the latter company decides that it wants to become what people in the industry call a “converged infrastructure provider”—in other words, a provider of all-in-one boxes that offer networking, storage and computing. Cisco pioneered the concept with its Unified Computing System servers; HP followed suit. Here, Dell has put a toe in the water with last year’s deal with Nutanix, but there otherwise hasn’t been much progress on that front.

????There’s one catch for Dell, though: VMware. The company’s growth has been slowing as its customers increasingly choose “open source” alternatives that promise to be cheaper and more versatile than proprietary options. And one of the companies pushing open networking happens to be Dell, making VMware integration at odds with the Texas company’s ethos.

????So if you’re Dell, and you’re in the market to buy EMC, there’s a lot to like in that company’s portfolio. (And we haven’t even mentioned the computer security company RSA.) But does it all add up enough to justify tens of billions of dollars for the entire package? Probably not. And nothing about such a deal addresses the existential plight of both companies: a future where their core businesses (and profit centers) are under attack and facing almost certain decline.

????And that’s why technologists are still scratching their heads.